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President Obama Discusses the "Good-News Story" of Ghana

President Obama welcomes the President of Ghana, John Atta Mills, to the White House.

President Barack Obama and Professor John Evans Atta Mills, President of the Republic of Ghana, hold a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office, March 8, 2012.(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Today, President Obama welcomed the President of Ghana, John Atta Mills, to the White House where they discussed the growing commercial and economic ties between the two nations.

Ghana was one of the first nations to host the President and First Lady Michelle Obama in 2009.

After their meeting, they spoke briefly with reporters, where President Obama outlined a number of initiatives where our countries are working together:

[The] President’s government recently is collaborating with a number of American businesses to build infrastructure inside of Ghana, which will create thousands of jobs here in the United States. And the trade that we engage in creates jobs for tens of thousands of people back in Ghana.

So that’s a good-news story. And what we’ve also been able to do is collaborate with the Ghanaian government through the Millennium Challenge Corporation -- they are a grant recipient -- and it has helped to improve a wide range of infrastructure and institutions inside of Ghana. Our Feed the Future program -- we’ve been able to help increase productivity there, and the Partnership for Growth -- that is also another mechanism where we’re collaborating, for example, on power generation and credit to small businesses and medium-size businesses inside of Ghana.